Ferdinand de Saussure's Nature of Linguistic Sign

Introduction

Ferdinand de Saussure is widely regarded as the father of modern linguistics. ‘The Nature of Linguistics Sign’ is extracted from his work “Course in General Linguistics”. It is a summary of the lectures at the University of Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure examines the relationship between speech and the evaluation of language, and investigates language as a structured system of signs.

Definition of Linguistics

Saussure defines linguistics as the study of language and as the study of the manifestation of human speech. He says that linguistics is also concerned with the history of languages and with the social or cultured influences that shape the development of language. It includes such fields as phonology, phonetics, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics and language acquisition.

Sign, Signification and Signs

 Saussure says that for some people, a language is a list of terms corresponding to a list of things. For ex: In Latin would be represented as ‘arbor’.

This conception is open to number of objections. It assumes that ideas already exist independently of words. It doesn’t clarify whether the name is vocal or a psychological entity. Thus a linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a sound, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called as ‘material’ element only. It is the representation of our sensory impressions.

 The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of more absent kind, the concept. The psychological nature of our sound pattern becomes clear when we consider our own linguistic activity without moving lips or tongue. Speaking of the sound and syllabus of a word need not give rise to any understanding, provided one always bears in mind that this refers to the sound pattern. That is concept.

According to Saussure, the linguistic sign is a two-sided psychological entity. These two elements are intimately linked and bid with each other. Thus in our terminology, a sign is the combination of a concept and a sound pattern. But in current usage the term ‘Sign’ generally refers to the sound pattern alone. For ex: the word ‘arbor’. It is forgotten that if carries with it the concept ‘tree’. So the sensory part of the term implies reference to the whole.

Linguistic Sign is arbitrary

The link between signal and signification is the combination in which a signal is associated with a signification. It can be expressed simply as ‘the linguistics is arbitrary’. By ‘arbitrary’ the author means that ‘it is unmotivated, that is arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified.

Saussure draws a distinction between language (langue) and the activity of speaking (parole). Speaking is an activity of the individual, language is the social manifestation of speech. Language is a system of signs that evolves from the activity of speech.

Language is a link between thought and sound, and is a means for thought to be expressed as sound. Thought have to become ordered and sounds have to be articulated for language to occur. Saussure says that language is really a borderline between thought and sound, where thought and sound combine to provide communication.

Spoken language include the communication of concepts by means of sound-images from the speaker to the listener language is a product of speaker’s communication of signs to the listener.

Saussure says that a linguistic sign is a communication of a concept and a sound image. The concept is what is signified, and the sound-image is a signifier. The combination of the signifier and signified is arbitrary that is any sound image can conceiving be used to signify a particular concept.

Thus, according to Saussure, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. There is no direct connection between the shape and the concept. For instance, there is no reason why the letter C-A-T (or the sound of the phonemes) produces exactly the image of the small, domesticated animal with fur, four legs and a trial in our minds. It is a result of ‘convention’; speakers of the same language group have agreed and learned that these letters or sounds evoke certain image.

Then Saussure defines semiology as the study of signs, and says that linguistics is a part of semiology. He maintains that written language exists for the purpose of representing spoken language. A written word is an image of a vocal sign. Then Saussure argues that language is a structural system of arbitrary signs. On the other hand, symbols are nor arbitrary. A symbol may be a signifier but in contrast to a sign, a symbol is never completely arbitrary. A symbol has a rational relationship with what is signified.

In the end of this part, two objects may be mentioned which might be brought against the principle that linguistic signs are arbitrary. They are,

a)     Onomatopoeia words might be held to show that a choice of signal is not always arbitrary. It is only approximate imitation, already partly conventionalized, of certain sounds. This is evident when it is compared to French dogs ‘oua oua’ and German dogs ‘Wau, Wau’.

b)     Interjections which falls much to the same logic as onomatopoeia, as in demonstrated by companies of the same expression in two languages (eg: The French ‘aie’ and the English ‘ouch’).

Conclusion 

Thus, Saussure shows that the meaning or signification of signs is established by their relation to each other. The relation of signs to each other forms the structure of language. Synchronic reality is found in the structure of language at a given point in time. Diachronic reality is found in changes of language over a period of time. To conclude with the words of Marya Mazor, “Ferdinand de Saussure ‘course in general linguistics’ is the first step and a mile stone in modern linguistics.

Reference: https://www.academia.edu/20136477/Nature_of_Linguistic_Sign?auto=download&email_work_card=view-paper

A Critical Analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s Novel Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers, originally titled Paul Morel, was published in 1913. It is largely

autobiographical. Mrs. Morel, a lady of cultivated and refined taste, married to a miner,

Walter Morel, is very unhappy with her marriage. Her Sons grow up, she selects them as

lovers. It is the most popular novel of Lawrence. Its plot is well- knit and is free from all

superfluities. The characters are seen from the outside as well as emotionally realised from

within. A very striking feature of the novel is a faithful description of life in the mining

village of Bestwood.

Summary of the novel Sons and Lovers

The first part of the novel focuses on Mrs. Morel and her unhappy marriage to a

drinking miner. She has many arguments with her husband, some of which have painful

results: sometimes she is locked out of the house and hit in the head with a drawer. Estranged

from her husband, Mrs. Morel takes comfort in her four children. William, her oldest son, is

 her favourite. When William sickens and dies a few years later, she is crushed, not even

noticing the rest of her children until she almost loses Paul, her second son, as well. From that

point on, Paul becomes the focus of her life, and the two seem to live for each other.

Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers, who lives on a farm not too far from the Morel

family. They carry on a very intimate, but purely platonic, relationship for many years. Mrs.

Morel does not approve of Miriam, and this may be the main reason that Paul does not marry

her. He constantly wavers in his feelings toward her.

Paul meets Clara Dawes, a suffragette who is separated from her husband, through

Miriam. As he becomes closer with Clara and they begin to discuss his relationship with

Miriam, she tells him that he should consider consummating their love and he returns to

Miriam to see how she feels.

Paul and Miriam sleep together and are briefly happy, but shortly afterward Paul

decides that he does not want to marry Miriam, and so he breaks off with her. She still feels

that his soul belongs to her, and, in part agrees reluctantly. He realizes that he loves his

mother most, however.

After breaking off his relationship with Miriam, Paul begins to spend more time with

Clara and they begin an extremely passionate affair. However, she does not want to divorce

her husband Baxter, and so they can never be married. Paul’s mother falls ill and he devotes

much of his time to caring for her. When she finally dies, he is broken-hearted and, after a

final plea from Miriam, goes off alone at the end of the novel.

Gertrude Morel, mother of Paul, was not happy with her family life; she hates her

husband Walter Morel. So, she shifts her affection on her sons – William, Paul and Arthur. At

the beginning, she had a passion for her first son William. When he died of disease, she takes

 to Arthur. He joined in the army and settled there. Finally, the affection of Gertrude falls on

Paul who lives with his mother. Because of his deepest love for his mother, Paul did not

marry anybody. This misplaced affection led Paul to mental suffering at the end. All the

novels of Lawrence are more or less autobiographical. But Sons and Lovers is almost a

carbon copy of the author’s life. The principal characters of the novel and the central

situations are drawn from Lawrence’s early life. Like Paul Morel’s father, Lawrence’s father

was a miner, uncultured and drunk. Like Paul’s mother, Lawrence’s mother was her

husband’s direct opposite.

Sons and Lovers: An Autobiographical Novel 

Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical novel, Lawrence was a tortured soul for the

full forty-five years of his life. Being highly sensitive, he reacted sharply, suffered intensely.

His parents never enjoyed conjugal felicity. The home atmosphere was embittered by their

endless bickerings. Repelled, by the coarse brutality of his father, Lawrence developed deep

attachment with his mother. She, too, frustrated in her marriage, leaned heavily on her

children, in particular on Lawrence, for emotional fulfilment and for the realisation of her

ambitions. Gradually, there grew an unhealthy inter-dependence between Lawrence and his

mother, that rendered him unfit to establish healthy emotional relationship with other women.

Lawrence grew into a self-conscious neurotic. At the age of sixteen, he had met Jessie

Chambers. He liked and loved her. But the dark shadow of his Oedipal relation with her

mother not let him attain emotional fulfilment through Jessie. They hung on to each other for

nearly ten years, but finally broke off. The entire experience had been so painful that in order

to work out of his catharsis, Lawrence had to relive it imaginatively and express it in artistic

terms. The result was Sons and Lovers.

            Lawrence believes in the law of polarity. If two characters coming in contact with

each other in any form of mutual relationship can achieve ‘polarisation’, they can achieve

happiness. There should be no attempt to ‘dominate’ or ‘possess’ the other partner. For a

successful human relationship, the ‘divine otherness’ of the others has to be recognised and

respected. Over-dominance by one results in the loss of identity of the other. And if one’s

very identity id threatened, it saps one’s vitality and poisons the whole relationship. Then

there is nothing to salvage it from total destruction. Lawrence does not deny the conflict, nor

does he recommend its cessation. He simply suggests that when two opposites come together,

they should endeavour to realise a state, “where conflict in transcended, a state of still

tension, life-sustaining, life-creating, forbidding forever the merging of opposites,

maintaining both in a state of mutual complementary balance”.

            In Sons and Lovers, Mrs Morel fails to maintain herself and her husband in a state of

‘mutual complementary balance’. Her middle class values, very trivial and hollow in

themselves, make her contemptuous of her husband. Her love of religion, philosophy and

politics is only an accessory to her ambition of attaining social recognition. 

            The mutual incompatibility of Mrs Morel and her husband not only destroys the

prospects of their personal happiness but also vitiates the lives even of their children. They

come to despise their father and develop an unhealthy attachment with their mother. Mrs

Morel too, frustrated in her married life, makes husband substitutes of her sons. She is jealous

of the girls who come to see William. She makes no attempt to hide her hostility towards

Gyp, the girl with whom William gets infatuated in London. Her open condemnation of Gyp

makes William feel guilty of his love. He suffers from an acute mental conflict, but this is a

conflict that cannot be resolved. He has developed such a relation with his mother that it can

neither release him nor offer him any emotional fulfilment. He gets weary of the world and

ultimately dies. 

The Oedipus Complex

The strongest influence in the life of D.H. Lawrence was that of his mother. After

disappointment in marriage, she had turned to her sons as her lovers. Her second son Arthur

was her favourite and she had pinned all hopes of a respectable future life on him. But he

died in London at a very young age, and in order to fill the emotional void caused by this

ultimately death, she turned to David.

Sigmund Freud's most celebrated theory of sexuality, the Oedipus complex, takes its

name from the title character of the Greek play Oedipus Rex. D.H. Lawrence was aware of

Freud's theory, and Sons and Lovers famously uses the Oedipus complex as its base for

exploring Paul's relationship with his mother. Paul is hopelessly devoted to his mother, and

that love often borders on romantic desire. Lawrence writes many scenes between the two

that go beyond the bounds of conventional mother-son love, Paul murderously hates his

father and often fantasizes about his death.

But Lawrence adds a twist to the Oedipus complex: Mrs. Morel is saddled with it as

well. She desires both William and Paul in near-romantic ways, and she despises all their

girlfriends. She, too, engages in transference, projecting her dissatisfaction with her marriage

onto her smothering love for her sons. At the end of the novel, Paul takes a major step in

releasing himself from his Oedipus complex. He intentionally overdoses his dying mother

with morphia, an act that reduces her suffering but also subverts his Oedipal fate, since he

does not kill his father, but his mother. 

      Sons and Lovers is thus an imaginative representation of the facts of Lawrence’s life.

E. Baker has observed that the novel “is of cardinal importance as a key to his intricate and

often paradoxical nature.”    

Reference: http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/S000013EN/P001445/M013026/ET/1497345181Paper04%3BModule07,ETexts.pdf

A Critical Analysis of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man covers the childhood and adolescence of Stephen Dedalus. We see him, over the course of the novel, grow from a little boy to a young man of eighteen who has decided to leave his country for Europe, in order to be an artist. Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint of an observer.

Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic adulthood.

The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him.

Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins deliberately, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both of these lifestyles—the completely sinful and the completely devout—are extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human. Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's decision at the end of the novel—to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist—suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his decision, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and family commitment that the community places on its members. However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a voice to the very community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the un-created conscience of my race." He recognizes that his community will always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will also convey the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the traditional forms of participation and membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to the community.

Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland's place in the world. He concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people, allowing outsiders to control them. In his conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that even the language of the Irish people really belongs to the English. Stephen's perception of Ireland's subservience has two effects on his development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to escape the bonds that his Irish ancestors have accepted. As we see in his conversation with Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from his Irish heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: "Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception makes him determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland. Using the borrowed language of English, he plans to write in a style that will be both autonomous from England and true to the Irish people.

Stephen ultimately asserts his identity and freedom when he remarks, “You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets”. Thus, Stephen’s ultimate call to life and freedom, though prefigured in the title of the novel and in his name as Stephen Dedalus, is realized through the novel by attractions, experiences and repudiations. But to view A Portrait only as a series of rejections and affirmations will be an incomplete reading. As Hugh Kenner points out, country and church, though rejected by Stephen, go a long way in contributing in his growth as an artist. Thus, whereas on one hand Stephen’s individual final identity as an artist, as Dedalus, is at once something which is constructed through a series of rejections and affirmations as discussed above, at the same time, this identity of his as an artist and a man free from the negativities of religion and nationality, synthesizes in it the essence of the very experiences which Stephen comes to reject. If life in its parts is negated, life in totality is embraced by Stephen at the end of the Novel.

Reference : https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/portraitartist/themes/